Jetta: cute space girl from the 1960s by famous Archie artist Dan DeCarlo

Comic book historian Craig Yoe has a knack for finding long-forgotten comic book gems. His latest full-color hardback book contains all three issues of Jetta, a Judy Jetson-esque space girl that predates The Jetsons by at least a decade. Jetta was created by Dan DeCarlo, the cartoonist responsible for the famous look of Betty and Veronica (Bob Montana created Archie, but DeCarlo's bold, fresh rendering of the characters are the ones we remember).

Yoe's homage to Jetta also includes sample of DeCarlo's work as a prolific pin-up artist, and 37 pages of Jetta drawings by contemporary cartoonists. Craig kindly invited me to contribute a drawing of Jetta for the anthology, and I eagerly obliged. Examples of the pin-up art can be see after the jump.

I used to work at Archie as an intern in the bullpen, doing clean-ups and cut-and-paste (literally.)

A big part of my job was putting the finishing touches on Dan Decarlo’s work, since he would often draw Betty and Veronica with hardly any clothes on. I think he did it for fun, knowing that we would all see it in the bullpen, but it would get “cleaned up” before printing.